9 years of stories, results, and commentary from a former online poker pro making the rounds at Northern California card rooms

Sunday, September 20, 2009

$5,200 WCOOP Main Event Underway!

I skipped out on the $215 tournament that started at ten this morning. I had the realization that I didn't want to play a $200 tournament for four hours before starting a $5,000 tournament that's going to go for 12 hours today!

I'm feeling much better today. I had a great steak last night, drank a nice bottle of Shiraz and slept for 12 hours. I'm going to recap yesterday's action tomorrow.

2,144 players plunked down the five grand to play the main event. We all started with 20,000 chips, blinds of 25/50 and 30 minute levels. And the blinds aren't exactly doubling every 30 minutes either - they go from 25/50 to 30/60 to 40/80 to 50/100 etc. Not sure if I've ever played a tournament where they start you with 400 big blinds (normally it's 50 or 60 and even in other WCOOP tournaments they start you with 200 or so)! This tournament is going to be looooong!

In the first hour we only lost 30 players which is totally unprecedented in my experience for a no limit tournament with 2,000 players.

The prizes are pretty astounding. The edge of the money is 306th which pays $8,040. 126th pays about $15,000. 45th is $25,000 or so. To make $50,000 I need to get to 15th which pays $58,000. Any spot at the final table is worth $100,000. 3rd is where you get to about a million dollar prize and first place pays $1,715,200!!!

After 100 hands or so I have 19,000 chips. I'll try to post frequent updates.